Online Memes as the Means of Carnivalesque Resistance and Political Deliberation in Russian Social Networks

Russian political and media environment has become increasingly restrictive and antagonistic towards criticism and resistance. The number of legislative, economic and political measures introduced in the recent years have significantly limited open deliberation of the alternative views in the public space. Those who see to oppose the government had to confine to the realm of social networks and employ new means of political deliberation. My research is focused on the creative way the online community discusses political issues, raises awareness of the liberal discourse and campaigns against the distortion of facts and ideas by the state propaganda. Resistance communication in social networks employs Internet memes - artful images, texts, slogans, videos - that go viral, entertain and spread the political message at the same time. The appropriation of casual Internet jokes, “the Internet vernacular” (Burgess, 2008; Milner, 2013; Meikle, 2014), for political deliberation fits in Wellman et al.’s (2003) concept of “networked individualism”: users do not have to swear allegiance to any political party or established organisation, they are empowered to tweet against the government from their individual accounts. Memes are anonymous by nature therefore offer protection for one’s private details and help to avoid state prosecution. Moreover, generation and maintenance of the alternative liberal discourse via the means of memes is instrumental in bypassing censorship: memes are ambiguous in their meaning, and what one reads as a political claim, another user may interpret as a light-hearted joke, and the same refers to censors. In my research memes are conceptualised through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1984) theory of the carnival. Carnival is a historical, archetypal form of dissent, a legal activity that allows for the promotion of alternative discourse, multiplicity of styles, and an intentional polyphony. Russian dissent by the means of memes provides a polyphony of voices that may not form a steady community, yet maintain critical discourse in the absence of other political opportunities. Content and textual analysis performed on over 600 memes of Crimean crisis in 2014 enabled me to pinpoint the main themes and narratives in the protest communication facilitated by memes. They reveal main topics in power struggles between the government and dissent publics, point to the contested national identities and broader discourses on gender issues, mutating notion of patriotism and citizenship, and many others. Interviews conducted with the proliferate Russian liberal meme makers and sharers have exhibited current trends in protest communication: people are intimidated to campaign openly by the means of traditional politics (rallies, posters, organisations) yet are motivated to keep campaigning online via satirical and artful communication. They are encouraged by the benefits of self-expression and relatively safe involvement in political debates through Internet memes. Memes, however, are limited in their capacity to maintain a substantial discussion or glue protest communities. Their potential and drawbacks have to be researched further. Nonetheless, this phenomenon of digital communication plays a significant role in preserving and fuelling current resistant political discourse in the Russian virtual space.